Exam teens ‘must revise 7 hours a day in holidays’

‘Good results are made at Easter’

TEENAGERS taking exams this summer should revise for seven hours a day during the Easter holidays if they don’t want to get poor grades, a top head warned yesterday.

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), said GCSE and A-level students must ‘sacrifice’ time off to be the best performers.

Mr Lenon advised cramming in 100 hours in the two-week break, covering 50 topics in two-hour slots.

He said the best results went to those who revised over Easter.

Exams have become more difficult in recent years following reforms introduced by former education secsuch retary Michael Gove. And at GCSE, it is harder to get the top grade.

Mr Lenon, who used to be the headmaster of Harrow, has published his top tips for teenagers taking their exams this summer.

He said: ‘Good exam results are made in the Easter holidays.

‘Public exam results are important. They can determine the course of your life. Other students will be working hard, so it is worthwhile sacrificing your holidays.

‘Your exams will be finished in June and you will then have at least two months’ holiday. The best GCSE and A-level results don’t go to the cleverest students – they go to those who revised in the Easter holidays.’

The ISC represents most private schools in Britain, including those as Eton and Westminster that send large numbers to Oxbridge.

Mr Lenon said: ‘Plan to work for seven hours a day most days of the Easter break. If you work for 14 days, that will be about 100 hours of revision. If each topic takes two hours to revise, that is 50 topics.’

He said revision should begin at 9am and students should finish by 6pm and not revise late as ‘good sleep will help your brain retain information’.

‘You need to revise all your work at least three times before the exam – once in the Easter break, once in the summer term, once a day or so before the exam,’ he added.

‘It is the coming back to the notes three or more times that drives the information into the long-term memory. What doesn’t work is simply reading notes or highlighting notes.

‘What does work is making notes from notes and then testing yourself, often by seeing if you can write out the notes from memory.’